Canonical on Tuesday announced the release of Ubuntu 15.04, aka "Vivid Vervet," as in East African monkey. It will be available for download on Thursday. The new OS offers tools for cloud, device, client and Internet of Things development. The Ubuntu desktop release includes mostly maintenance and bug fixes, along with new integrated menus and dashboard usability improvements. [More...]

Black Duck Software and North Bridge Venture Partners on Thursday published the results of The Ninth Annual Future of Open Source Survey. The number of companies using some open source products or developing software built with open source components is at an all-time high, it found. The results reflect the increasing enterprise adoption of open source and participation in the OSS community. [More...]

SuperX OS is a solid Linux distribution that dispels all of the criticisms about using free open source OSes. SuperX is a relatively new distro developed by Libresoft. Based on Ubuntu and Debian, it adds a highly customized KDE desktop environment. The maturity and impressive performance of Grace, its latest release, makes the SuperX OS a prime replacement choice for whatever distro you now use. [More...]

Google recently purged some 200 extensions from its Chrome Store inventory. Extensions and add-ons let users add functions and features to the Chrome Web browser, but bad extensions can expose users to a greater risk of spyware and malware. A major problem with many browser add-ons is ad injectors. The clean-up resulted from increasing user complaints. [More...]

Parsix GNU/Linux 7 is a feature-rich rendition of the GNOME desktop that you must take for a spin. Dubbed Nestor, the project's goal is to provide a ready-to-use and easy-to-install operating system based on Debian's testing branch and the latest stable release of the GNOME desktop environment. The Parsix distro meets that goal -- and goes even beyond. [More...]

Open sourcing the code for Microsoft Windows is "definitely possible," Microsoft engineer Mark Russinovich reportedly said last week during a panel discussion at ChefConf. The company isn't acknowledging any movement in that direction as yet, but Russinovich's remarks are a strong indication that the Microsoft of today isn't the trenchant foe of the paradigm it was in the past. [More...]

Google has announced two new budget-busting Chromebook computers, a tablet/notebook convertible with a full swivel screen, and a Chrome computer-on-a-stick. The Haier Chromebook 11 and the Hisense Chromebook both are available for preorder for $149. The Asus Chromebook Flip will hit the market this spring with a $249 price tag. The Asus Chromebit will be available this summer for less than $100. [More...]

Cyanogen has announced the completion of a financing round that brought $80 million in new funds to pay for more hiring and accelerated development of its open platform software development kit. Cyanogen is committed to liberating the Android OS from the financial grip of Google. Cyanogen has spurred a developing secondary app market for an alternative Android distribution based on its mods. [More...]

Bodhi Linux 3.0.0 RC3's implementation of the Enlightenment desktop, makes an awesome desktop computing platform for office or home. Bodhi is one of only a handful of Linux distros embracing the Enlightenment environment. Its developers call Bodhi the Enlightened Linux Distribution. Beware if you try it: Bodhi Linux could easily become your favorite Linux distro. [More...]

It looks and sounds good, but virtual reality is still establishing how to get around in the digital worlds it creates. OSVR has placed the controls in the hands of Leap Motion, which may be a stellar move. Leap's novel approach embeds the VR controls in a faceplate that can be attached to an OSVR-compatible headset. The faceplate will be bundled with OSVR's Hacker Dev Kit when it ships in June. [More...]

Docker -- the open source application container technology that has drawn broad interest from the enterprise IT industry -- recently marked its second birthday. Judging by its growth and traction thus far, and the example set by such open source projects as Linux, Hadoop, Android, OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, expect big things from this young open source software project and community. [More...]

The Software Freedom Conservancy earlier this month announced that it was funding a lawsuit filed by Linux kernel developer Christoph Hellwig against VMware in the district court of Hamburg in Germany. The conservancy entered a grant agreement with Hellwig for the legal action. Its funding of the legal action is part of the program activity of its GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers. [More...]

Q4OS has the potential to become a new attention-getter among up and coming Linux distros. But this distro has a way to go before its development reaches full functionality. Right now it is working its way to a non-beta version 1.0 release. New beta versions are frequently released, often a few weeks to a month apart. The latest release was version 0.5.25 on February 4. [More...]

Some 60 Linux kernel developers last week adopted a small "patch," called the "Code of Conflict," that attempts to set guidelines for discourse in the kernel community and outlines a path for mediation if someone feels abused or threatened. Linux creator Linus Torvalds' call for improved internal developer relations could be little more than wishful thinking, though. [More...]

Evolve OS Beta 1 needs considerable fine-tuning to get to release candidate status, but it has two innovations that distinguish it from the crowd of Linux distro newcomers. This new arrival is built around a home-made desktop called "Budgie" and a custom package manager forked from Pardus Linux. I am always interested in new desktop approaches. That's what drew my attention to Evolve OS. [More...]

Red Hat last week made Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host generally available, following a four-month live beta test. "The beta release was very successful," said Lars Herrmann, senior director of product strategy at Red Hat. Feedback from customers and partners "helped us refine several features and tools" for the GA version. Atomic Host is a lean OS designed to run Docker containers. [More...]

ChaletOS began as a personal project of developer Dejan Petrovic. This operating system has a familiar Windows-like style, with appealing simplicity and impressive speed. Much of that performance credit goes to the use of the Xfce desktop. The system controls are tweaked to bring unique style-changing capabilities to a classic Linux desktop environment. [More...]

Google this week confirmed that it's preparing to launch a mobile payments framework called "Android Pay." Google SVP of Product Sundar Pichai discussed the project at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Android Pay will be an API layer of Android. Google will incorporate standard features for mobile payments, such as tokenized card numbers, into an Android Pay software development kit. [More...]

18F, a development unit within the General Services Administration, was established a year ago to tap into the success of the United Kingdom's Government Digital Services unit by pursuing a similar strategy. The unit is tasked with getting developers from Silicon Valley and the ranks of civic developers all over the country to change how federal technology gets done. [More...]

If you favor the OS X environment, Pearl OS might be a Linux distro to feed your fancy. Pearl OS is a revival of the discontinued Pear OS distro. It picks up where Pear left off in early 2014. Pearl OS has two desktop versions: XFCE and MATE. Both are based on Ubuntu Linux distro version 14.04 Mini release. The two flavors of Pearl OS are customized to look and act like the OS X operating system. [More...]